The Observable World

The man she loves has red hair and is afflicted by a nameless and terrible unhappiness. Even so, he loves climbing trees, building small electronics. He loves insects. Today on their dog walk, he stops to move slugs off the sidewalk. She watches how precisely the man she loves takes a fallen leaf, and with it, scoops the slugs into the grass.

He admires their eyestalks. “That’s what makes them cute. Without them, they would be horrifying.”

He’s right. He’s often right about what makes something lovely. Without eyestalks, the slugs’ bodies would be damp, glistening sacs. Like leeches. But the eyestalks are delicate. Probing the air in a kind of slow wistfulness. They make her think, a little, of faeries.

He crouches, watching the slugs settle into the grass. He tells her that eyestalks are actually tentacles.

“Tentacles,” she says. “Like an octopus?”

“Well, no,” he says, frowning. “Octopi have prehensile tentacles. For grasping.”

She scans their environment. In the distance, a hive of late afternoon life: parents with strollers, children on bikes, joggers, dogs dawdling on the sidewalk while their owners look at phones. She and the man she loves are in the neighborhood park, a diamond-shaped meadow expanse that leads to a wooded trail. The woods are dense, but too small to be actual woods. She has passed through them many times with their dog. Less often with the man she loves.

He observes the eyestalks with intensity and fascination. He does not touch the slugs, as that might injure them. He tells her that some eyestalks are retractable. Some can regrow if severely damaged. That the eyestalks are tentacles makes it possible for the slugs’ observable world to shift and change, quite apart from their bodies. These eyestalks, these tentacles, are ommatophore.

“Oh,” she says. Oh is the right response. He doesn’t look up.

His unhappiness is not a tame thing. If she says, for example, you know so much about insects, he will fall out of this moment of peace. He will tell her the slugs are not insects. She knows they are not insects, but their exact classification escapes her just now. If she says, they make me think of faeries, he will leave this gentle moment, saving slugs. That doesn’t make sense, he will say. That doesn’t make any sense at all. He might even have a tantrum.

She assesses the back of his neck, freckling in the sun. He might.

At home she says, I think you need to take a break. His fury radiates like a bomb blast. It doesn’t faze her anymore. Mostly, he will take a break before it gets to that. Mostly. If he doesn’t, she will outlast him. She has miles of stamina.

She is not afraid of him. They both know very well, and have for many years, that she will not be bullied. She is a warrior. His strange, bitter silences are harder to bear.

A public tantrum is unacceptable. If it happens, she will leave him at the park. He will want to follow her. He hates when she walks away from him, particularly in the thick of his wrath. But he won’t follow. The dog, an aging but well-preserved German Shepherd, loves the man, but she is the dog’s favorite. If the man she loves yells at her, the dog will interpose his body between them. He will bark at the man she loves. The dog, like any dog, has many tones, but this will be the real Shepherd bark: booming, heroic, carrying the clout of authority. Stop this. Now. Stop.

Justice Bark, the man she loves calls it. He will get the Justice Bark.

The man she loves cannot bear when he’s made the dog warn him. He does not blame the dog. It’s natural, he says. He’s a protector. That’s his job. He loves the dog. He loves her. He will go into the woods and be angry by himself. All this has happened before.

Something’s wrong with me, he will say later. Something’s wrong with me. She knows something is wrong with him. But she does not know what.

They walk on, into the woods. He holds the dog’s leash. The dog browses the underbrush, investigating scents in his unhurried way. Happiest, as he always is, that the three of them are out in the world together.

“That tree smells like grape Kool-Aid,” she says. Yesterday the man she loves was cross that he did not know the name of the tree. So today she mentions it again. He has probably corrected that gap in his knowledge. He will want her to know that.

“Texas Mountain Laurel.” He cuts a sprig and places it behind her ear, lightly as he had lifted the slugs.

“Que linda eres,” he says with competent pronunciation. He has absorbed so much language from her. Not just what the words mean, but how to say them accurately. Her grandmother has an abiding affection for the man she loves because of this. Not because he’s quick to learn, which he is. Because this gringo wanted to learn in the first place. In fact, he has surpassed her in some ways. Her grandmother has taught him to make tortillas, champurrado, tamales—so many things she, the granddaughter, does not know. Que parejita tan moderna, her grandmother laughs. What a modern couple.

He leans in to smell the sprig of laurel. He kisses her hair softly. “It really does smell like sugar. Maybe it’s you.”

“Maybe,” she says.

She does not say, I have an eyestalk. My eyestalk is a searchlight. Looking, looking for, what?

She is still thinking about faeries, so after a little while, she decides to tell him a story. This is fine because he’s been talking about slugs at length. She’s made it clear before that she will have her turn too. He understands.

The story is a Scottish one, Tam Lin, but she doesn’t bother with the name. This is a detail he will not care about. He brushes little bramble bits out of the dog’s ear, makes soft clucks when the dog stops too long at one bush or another. He listens to the story.

“—And after the tryst in the woods with the faerie, Janet realizes she’s pregnant. She’s afraid her family will find out. So she goes back to the woods to get herbs that will end the pregnancy. And that guy Tam Lin is there again. He asks her not to get rid of his baby. He loves her, and it’s their child.”

“The guy is an elf?” the man she loves asks. He has no patience with fantasy creatures. But it’s her turn, so he restrains himself.

“Well, Janet asks him, have you ever been a human? And he says yes, he was a human, but he was stolen by the faeries as a child.” She considers, briefly, explaining the mythology of changelings, but flicks it away as ranging too off-topic. “And he tells her he wants to be with her. He can be a human again, but she must free him. Because the faeries are going to sacrifice him to hell on Halloween night.”

“Sam Hain,” says the man she loves. She ignores this.

“He tells Janet, there’s one chance. Right before midnight, the faeries will be heading out to a certain place in the woods. Janet needs to lie in wait. Let the Queen of the Faeries pass. Let the queen’s chamberlain pass. Then she’ll see Tam Lin riding a white horse. And when she does, Janet must interrupt the procession and drag him off the horse.”

As she tells the story, she can see Janet. Janet alone, belly full of baby, hiding in the underbrush, a guerrilla force unto herself. Janet in the dark, straining to see a white horse illuminated in the filtered moonlight of a midnight wood. Waiting for the flicker of torches as the faeries emerge into her line of vision. The low thump of unshod hooves on the path. There it is, the white horse. There it is, finally. She sees it. She will free Tam Lin.

“That’s it?” he asks. “Just get him off the horse?”

“No,” she says. “She has to hang on to him for the space of twenty-one heartbeats. One for each year of his life. She has to hold on and not let go for twenty-one heartbeats.”

“Huh,” says the man she loves. He is considering twenty-one heartbeats in terms of actual time.

“So that’s what she does. She hides in the woods and waits. Sure enough, here come at least twenty faeries on horseback. The queen passes by. The chamberlain. And there’s Tam Lin on the white horse. Janet leaps out and pulls him off its back.”

“Hold on,” he says. He cleans up after the dog. He ties the knot at the top of the bag. “We should turn back, I think.”

“OK,” she says. He drops the bag in the trash bin, another marker that this is not a real wood, only a city greenscape, and she continues. “Janet clutches Tam Lin in her arms. He’s dazed, spellbound. The faeries circle round them, hissing and furious.”

She imagines the faces of the faeries as hidden inside the deep cowls of their cloaks, eyes glinting in the torchlight. Janet, defiant, planted in their midst, her arms a steel vise round her lover.

“And Tam Lin begins to change. He turns into a giant shard of ice and freezes her. He turns into a seething hot brand. It’s agony. But she doesn’t let go.”

The man she loves is looking at her now. He is not a stupid man. But he says nothing.

“He turns into a horrible beast that claws and bites her. He turns into a swan, tries to fly out of her arms. An eel, writhing to get free. Janet holds on. She doesn’t let go.”

“Janet really loves him,” he says in a very quiet voice. He’s not looking at her anymore. She doesn’t answer. If she says yes, he will go into a rage right now. It is that close.

“Finally, the twenty-one heartbeats pass. Tam Lin transforms into himself. He’s naked, but human. Janet throws her green mantle around him. To cover him. To claim him for herself. The faeries are so pissed, but they can’t harm them, because the spell is broken. She and Tam Lin walk out of the woods together and start their lives.”

“Yeah, great for Tam Lin,” the man she loves says. “What about Janet? Is she happy?”

They, too, are leaving the woods, which are not real woods. There is the playground. Beyond it, the diamond-shaped park, the basketball court. The orderly grid of residential streets.

“I don’t know,” she says. “He became a human again. So, maybe.”

She takes the dog’s leash from him as they reach the sidewalk. A little boy in a Pokémon shirt has just spotted them. He bolts straight for their dog. His mother pursues him, her voice a hook of fear. The child runs faster.

“Here we go again,” the man she loves says. He doesn’t mind the child. He minds the mother. Moms panic so much, he’s said. That’s normal, she’s told him. Moms are supposed to see danger.

She puts the dog in a down stay. She does this for the sake of the mother. The dog lies there, complacent and panting, while the child drops to his knees beside him. The mother arrives seconds later, gasping out apologies. She tells the mother it’s no worries. It’s OK.

“He looks like a wolf,” the child says. “A wolf who came out of the woods.”

“He’s a German Shepherd,” the man she loves says. “Prick-eared breeds look like wolves.”

“What’s his name?” asks the child.

“Edgar,” she says.

“Edgar the Enormous,” says the man she loves, grinning at the boy. Indeed, the dog is an imposing animal. The man she loves jokes that Edgar’s real name is oh shit. That’s the refrain when Edgar is out in public. Oh shit, that’s a big-ass dog. Oh shit!

“E-normous!” The boy giggles. “He’s e-normous!”

“One hundred pounds,” says the man she loves. This is accurate. He has consulted with their veterinarian about the healthiest range for the dog’s size and structure and he keeps the dog trim. The dog has hip dysplasia. Though he is eight years old, its effects are minimal. He gets regular exercise, fish oil and joint supplements in every meal. Still, the man she loves worries he will get arthritis in the hip, possibly lose mobility. He loves Edgar very much.

“Hi, Edgar,” says the boy. The dog licks his hand. The boy brushes his small index finger along the dog’s canine. “Lookit his wolf teeth.”

“No, no, not his mouth!” the mother cries. Nothing happens, so she adds, “You could scare him.”

“It’s safe,” says the man she loves. “Edgar’s a gentleman.”

The mother is young and white. She wears yoga pants and has a ponytail pulled through her baseball cap. She could be any given mom in this neighborhood. She hovers uncertainly behind her son. She apologizes again. This is why the man she loves often finds mothers irritating.

He doesn’t see what she sees: this mother fears the dog. Bodily fears him, so much that she cannot bring herself to pick up her son. Her terror is palpable. What pins the mother to the sidewalk like a lanced butterfly is that she will not say so. Because it’s bad manners.

The child ignores his mother. He strokes the dog’s thick pelt, runs both hands between the dog’s brawny shoulders, down the curve of glossy black spine. The dog accepts the child’s questing fingers. Allows the tender gesture when the boy presses his cheek to the dog’s neck. He snuffles the boy, reading these new scents with delighted curiosity. He doesn’t jostle the boy. He is an old hand at children.

“We’ve kept them long enough, honey,” the mother tells the boy. “It’s time to go.”

“No,” says the child.

The mother is angry with her son, has been angry with him, at the bottom of it all. His refusal sparks her. The mother tells the boy he cannot run up to strange dogs. He cannot. Dogs can bite.

“He won’t bite me,” the child says, stung. “He’s my friend.”

“Did you hear me tell you we’re leaving?”

The boy does not answer. He keeps petting the dog’s back.

The man she loves hunkers down beside the dog and boy. He rubs the dog’s back too. “He is your friend. See how he’s sniffing you? He’s learning your scent. Next time, he’ll remember you.”

“He will?”

“Yes,” he says. “His nose tells him who you are. You’re the only one who smells like you. Scoot on home with your mama. Edgar won’t forget you.”

“OK.” The boy gets up, though reluctantly.

“See ya later,” he tells the boy. The man she loves understands children, even difficult ones, she knows. They just want to learn about things, he’s told her. There’s nothing wrong with that.

When they are a few steps away, the mother scoops up her son. The child is outraged. He struggles in her arms. He shrieks. His mother takes no notice. His mother trudges resolutely across the park. Straight home.

The man she loves shakes his head. “She is gonna paint his back porch red.”

“No she won’t,” she says. “He’s gonna get tired before they get home.”

The dog releases himself from his down stay. He takes a few steps, makes eye contact. He’s ready to go. She gives the leash back to the man she loves. They walk home.

The light is clear, but fading, in the manicured suburban park. Families replaced by this dusky hour with young men on the basketball court. She hears the faint bass thump of their music, their crowing and swagger. On the sidewalk, middle-aged women, singles and pairs, move at a brisk pace, getting their steps in before night. A different half-dozen dogs with their owners. A different smatter of joggers. In her field of view there is nothing, not one thing, out of place.

“No offense,” the man she loves says. “But I didn’t like that story you told earlier. You can’t measure time by heartbeats.”